


caught red-handed showing feelings of an almost human nature

by brotherfuckersanonymous



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to Religion, Sibling Incest, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-24 13:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14356665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brotherfuckersanonymous/pseuds/brotherfuckersanonymous
Summary: Jeremiah is on the cusp of seventeen and he's growing up in all the wrong ways. His mother bemoans the fact that he stays shut up in his room all the time, but she doesn't understand that he doesn't have a choice.He skims over the same word over and over before finally turning a page in his book, fingers shaking in an effort to distract himself from another miniature Catholic heartache.





	caught red-handed showing feelings of an almost human nature

**Author's Note:**

> who ordered the inevitable angsty gay teen incest au? anyone? anyone? you're getting it anyway because i need something small to help me make it through the rest of my semester
> 
> (title is from the trial by pink floyd.)

Jeremiah doesn't go outside. 

He doesn't have agoraphobia or anything like that. Not really. It does make him nervous, exposed, but if he's expecting something in the mail or needs to go out late at night for a pack of ballpoint pens or something to hide in his room that he can snack on when his stomach is hurting too badly, he can go out then. He can step outdoors and won't have a panic attack, but otherwise, he chooses not to go outside. Or downstairs, except when his mother demands he does so, but that's rare. Jeremiah stays in his bedroom, mapping out thumbnails on the blueprint paper papering his walls and drawing outlines for complicated-looking houses that have too many places to hide in. 

He thinks of places he can hide from Jerome.

 

* * *

 

Jerome is twenty-one minutes older than Jeremiah. It’s long enough that it feels like another stab in Jeremiah’s side, that maybe there was a chance they weren’t going to be brothers but someone changed their mind at the last minute. 

Jerome calls Jeremiah younger. Little brother, baby brother, even though they’re the same height, practically the same weight, the same everything, right down to their core. They have the same freckle on the back of their hand in the same place. Same peering, suspicious, reading eyes. Same pink butterfly lips. Same violent-red hair. The only difference between them is Jeremiah’s glasses. 

They have the same bodies. The same corded muscles, but Jerome is a little more built because, well, Jeremiah doesn’t leave the house. Jerome’s skin glows more. He’s prettier. 

Jerome’s skin feels like laying in bed when a patch of sunlight from the window warms the sheets. Jeremiah wants to sink into the lazy, holy feeling of it, closing his eyes and falling deep down. When it doesn’t hurt, when Jeremiah doesn’t feel the nausea creep through his insides and spill out of his mouth, it feels like bliss. 

When it doesn’t hurt, Jeremiah feels excited, because it feels like being in love. When their mother is out of the house, Jerome doesn’t have as much to prove or test or play with, so he lets Jeremiah feel like he’s in love. He knows it’s because he doesn’t talk to anyone, but it feels so good to know what being in love is like. He talks to a girl he knows online, but them ‘dating’ each other feels too performative and he tries to force feelings that he can’t scrounge up. He can only feel this real, strong, firm, floating feeling in this very specific stasis when his legs are tangled together and he has red hair twisted between his fingers and his mouth falls open and he says Jerome’s name. 

 

* * *

 

Jeremiah feels sick when he’s not in love. 

He thinks it’s like alcohol withdrawal. When he doesn’t get to have that one feeling, he’s forced to think and because he’s him he overthinks. Jeremiah will curl up on the bathroom floor, hugging himself around the middle and shaking. His glasses are sitting on the sink and he’s in his pajamas, the freezing tile surrounding him through the cotton. He gasps and shivers from cold and the fever he’s brought on himself from anxiety, falling into another panic attack. 

When he finally empties his stomach, he feels a little better. It’s like he’s purging everything with it, even as stomach acid fries the back of his throat and the sticky sweet sour coats his mouth even after he rinses it out four times. 

 

* * *

 

Jeremiah can only ever let himself overthink when Jerome is out of the house. 

Jerome has a lot of friends. Of course he does, because Jerome loves to make friends. Not best friends, of course not, but lots of friends.

“If they don’t wanna be me,” Jerome had drawled once, sitting at the end of the bed and keeping the tip of a switchblade on his tongue, tasting the memory of a cut on Jeremiah’s cheek, “if they don’t wanna love me, if they don’t wanna kill me — well, what’s the point, huh?” 

“It’s high school,” Jeremiah said flatly. 

Jerome winked and took the knife out of his mouth, stabbing it into Jeremiah’s mattress right between his legs, just missing his thigh. “Gotta eat them before they eat you first.”

Jerome has friends who entertain him well enough. Jeremiah has always been subjected to Jerome’s friends over the years, but now it’s just general another reason to stay trapped in his room, now that Jerome knows how to hurt people by using other people. Really, really hurt people. When they were three, Jerome could pull hair and bite and hit and kick. When they were ten, Jerome could make weapons and steal whatever he didn’t have and set things on fire and set traps. When they were fourteen, Jerome learned about sex and violence and the way people work. 

When puberty had first struck them at full-force, turning them tall and thin and poster-boy-looking, Jerome started becoming a man that Jeremiah had nightmares about. He dreamed every night about the way he was going to die. He dreamed about confusing, terrifying, guilt, sick things, making other people die. He dreamed about pictures he found on his phone in the middle of the night — women with beckoning eyes and soft curves and men with sharp faces and long fingers. Jerome looked at them with him and made snide comments about every single one, which has always confused Jeremiah to this day, because Jerome touched himself the entire time. 

 

* * *

 

Jerome has lots of friends and they go out a lot. 

They stay out until two or three or even four. Their mother’s tired, she doesn’t understand, Jeremiah can’t blame her for not punishing him. But curfew is one in the morning. 

Jerome likes to use people to hurt other people. He acts like he’s a character in a realistic horror movie, where the monsters are human. He beats people. He beats them and cuts them and laughs in their faces when they scream or cry and Jeremiah knows because Jerome sends him pictures and videos that Jeremiah deletes instantly because it makes him sad and sick and weirdly, bizarrely, horribly hungry. He’s not Jerome, he could never be Jerome, so he doesn’t want to be dragged into the flickering street lights illuminating the cuts and bruises and missing teeth or even eyes that he wishes, in the back of his mind and between his hips, he could make people feel. 

Jerome hasn’t ever been caught because he paints his face and his friends wear masks and stupid fucking Halloween costumes. 

Jerome says he needs a name. “A stage name,” he mutters as he sticks his fingers in Jeremiah’s mouth, giving an unsaid order for Jeremiah to suck on them and get him wet. "Something people can remember. I want them to remember me. I wanna be a _star_ , baby bro."

Jeremiah coughs when Jerome pulls his fingers out. A strand of spit connects the two of them together. "You're trying to make a, a, an entire career out of hurting people," he says. "For fun. For money. Just - just to be sick. You're sick. You don't need a name, you need someone to lock you up."

Jerome giggles and shoves his fingers inside Jeremiah. "Nah, nope, what I need. . . I need someone to say my name." He wraps his other hand around Jeremiah's throat, cutting off a whining moan of protest. 

"Say my name," Jerome snarls. 

 

* * *

 

Jeremiah is taking college classes online, because he doesn't go to school anymore. He doesn't need to. His mother gave up on the concept of him 'socializing' and 'fitting in' a very long time ago. He's going to go to Yale later on. Or Harvard. Or Princeton. Something like that, because he has a fierce desire to go to a school like that while Jerome inevitably rots in juvie and then prison. And Jeremiah will cry about it and want him back, but understand everything is better this way.

Jerome is smart. He's every bit as smart as Jeremiah is and knows how to avoid getting suspended or even in trouble most of the time. Jeremiah's seen it time and again: Jerome will do something wretched and horrible and he'll knit his fingers together and look up at people with big eyes and sniffle and cry big, pathetic gobs of tears, sobbing out, _I didn't do it, I swear, I didn't mean to hurt anyone, please, it wasn't my fault; Miah, tell them I didn't do it_. He's sixteen and he'll still do it whenever he gets caught. Everyone else is to blame. He's just a victim of circumstance. He's a broken boy from a broken home. People click their tongues in sympathy and pet his hair and tell him everything's going to be okay. Is he taking his medication? Does he need someone to talk to? Has he been saying his prayers?

Jeremiah feels like his skin is going to blister if he takes his rosary out from under the bed, but sometimes he whispers the Fatima. "Save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy," he recites under his breath with his eyes shut over the sickness crawling through him again. 

Jeremiah supposes he can't really blame Jerome for dismissing God if he thinks he _is_ God, but it's still irritating.

 

* * *

 

Jeremiah met his online girlfriend through the message board assignments they're all meant to reply to so they can review each other's work before class. She's two years older than him, she's eighteen, and she's as advanced and enthusiastic about engineering and biochemistry and physics and literature as he is. He talks to her on video chats and she's pretty. She's blonde and British and looks a little like an international spy. He doesn't really know her real name, because she doesn't use MLA formatting for her posts, but she calls herself Ecco and Jeremiah thinks with a dopey mindset that it's very cool. And she's _eighteen_. 

Ecco is pretty and smart and she gushes to him, saying "you're adorable" or "you're so sweet" or "you're brilliant" or "your cock's bigger than I thought it would be". She's sent him pictures of herself and he doesn't know what else to say other than "you look so hot" because, yes, objectively, she is. What else is he supposed to say?

Jeremiah wants to pull his skin off when he thinks about it. He can't be a normal person. He can't let himself like a pretty girl. He's only allowed to feel that love whenever he can feel a warm, flat chest against his and long, broad fingers playing his ribcage like a piano. When he sees a face above his like a reflection and he dimly thinks if he looks just the same way when he has an orgasm. 

Jeremiah wants to love Ecco. He wants it badly enough that he aches and it creates threads that string themselves throughout his chest, pulling tightly. But the fact remains that he can't feel anything without thinking of Jerome first. Jerome has fully broken him in. 

 

* * *

 

Jerome tries to coax Jeremiah into going out with him sometimes. 

"No," Jeremiah says before Jerome even finishes talking, bending over pre-calc homework. 

Jerome rolls his eyes and drags himself over to grab the pen out of Jeremiah's hand, jabbing him in the throat with it. Jeremiah gags and tries to grab the pen back, but Jerome hurls it out the window and looks at Jeremiah with a smug triumph that something like this doesn't really warrant in the slightest. 

Jeremiah sighs between his teeth and grabs a pencil from the cup on his desk. "I'm not coming with you to see if I can get away with fucking someone's skull."

Jerome laughs. "Yeowch, Jesus, Jer, never thought of that before. You're kinda sick, ain't'cha?"

Jeremiah's lips thin out. "I'm not coming."

"Awww, come on, you're missing out," Jerome says, pouting. Without warning, he grabs the back of Jeremiah's chair and pulls him back before swinging over and sitting in his lap. Jeremiah swallows tightly and maintains eye contact, because doing anything else would be losing.

"Why won't you come?" Jerome asks, his voice the low, scratching purr he likes to use when he's trying to talk Jeremiah into something, out of something, use him for anything. "I know you want to. Don't you wanna know what it's like?"

"No," Jeremiah snaps, sick of this already. "I'm not like you."

"Yes you are." Jerome wraps his fingers around Jeremiah's throat, pressing in just enough for him to feel the pressure. Jeremiah closes his eyes. God damn it, he lost. "We work the same way, pretty boy. Same body, same mind, _insane_ mind. I remember that night you tried to kill me 'cause you thought I was sleeping. Boring ol' steak knife. You coulda' at least gotten something more interesting."

Jeremiah's breath comes out in tiny shivers. "I - I didn't. I never did."

"Liar," Jerome growls, his fingers tightening. Jeremiah lets a tiny whimper escape as breathing becomes even more difficult. "I felt it. Liar, liar. Come on, you should've gone through with it! I know you wanted to!"

Jeremiah can hear blood beating like a drum in his ears. "I didn't," he chokes out. "M-maybe I thought - thought about it - but I didn't - want to."

"Fucking liar. You could've done it in a second. You could've buried that thing deep inside me. . ." Jerome presses his thumb against the column of Jeremiah's throat, licking his lips. "You could've pulled it in and out and in and out again until I just spilled everywhere and went to sleep. Made a big mess all over myself." 

"Oh my God, stop," Jeremiah manages. "Stop it. I didn't do it. I didn't - I didn't try to go through with it. That's the difference." 

Jerome laughs at him. "The difference is that you're a coward, Jer. You won't go through with it 'cause what if the whore in the next room finds out? What if you're not a golden boy anymore? What if you have to send your test scores to San Quentin instead of Stanford 'cause everyone found out you killed your poor, sick brother? Oh, yeah, you'd do it if no one'd find out." Jerome climbs off him and grabs the back of his chair, yanking it back. Jeremiah yelps and tries to grab purchase on the desk, but the wood crashes behind him and he falls in a heap against the floor. 

Jerome combs his fingers through his hair and straightens the jacket he stole from their father's long-forgotten possessions in the attic. The toe of his shoe nudges Jeremiah's head until Jeremiah's cheek touches the carpet, revealing the brand-new crack in his glasses. "Call me if you change your mind, 'kay? Don't wait up." Jerome drops to his knees and grabs Jeremiah's chin, giving him a rough kiss on the lips. "I'll be back soon." 

After Jerome leaves, not shutting the door behind him just to be a dick, Jeremiah inspects his glasses. The glasses are only cracked because they fell off and Jeremiah's shoulder jammed into them. He sighs, knowing full well he'll have to live with it for another month or so. 

 

* * *

 

 

Jeremiah doesn't go outside. He's afraid of people and how he wants to hurt other people and that Jerome is going to sneak up on him and drag him away to force him into doing something he craves doing. He doesn't know how to talk to people. He doesn't know how to function with or without Jerome, caught in this strange prison of his own making that he will always blame on his brother because why would he ever want to blame himself? He never did anything wrong.

All Jeremiah knows are bottles of Prozac and sticky, bleeding cups of cough syrup to put himself to sleep and the taste of vomit and how it feels to have a cold knife against his hot neck when he's supposed to be swallowing around Jerome's cock and he chokes instead. And he knows what it's like to be in love, so that's why he'll sneak into Jerome's bed and kiss him, offering himself up because that's the only way he's going to feel it again. 

Jeremiah first learned what it was like to be in love when he was fourteen, when Jerome held him down and used his tongue for the first time while he kissed him. Jeremiah wants to hate and curse Jerome, call him a rapist or a molester, but that's too disingenuous even for Jeremiah. Jeremiah knows what it's like to want and beg and cry for more _more more moremoremore_.

He can't go outside, he can't have friends, and he can't like a girl because he has Jerome's mind, but none of the charisma, none of the gift of acting, none of the power, none of the pride, none of the bravery. He's an even more broken version of Jerome, which makes Jeremiah feel even more like a mistake. It makes him terrified that, without Jerome, he wouldn't even have a reason to exist, seeing as he's nothing more than an extension. 

Jeremiah's bathroom mirror has been broken since he was twelve and he refuses to look in anything else that'll show him his own reflection. It's not like he needs it.

 

* * *

 

 

Jerome rests his forehead against Jeremiah's as he rolls his hips, his mouth falling open as he exhales, his fingers pressing into the backside of Jerome's thigh. Jeremiah's fingernails drag down Jerome's back and he moans, practically melting into the bed when Jerome strikes a sensitive spot that turns his insides into thick liquid. He's so close, so close, he's achingly hard and leaking onto his stomach. 

"Love you, Miah," Jerome says in Jeremiah's ear, his voice broken up into scratching pieces before he nuzzles against Jeremiah's neck, clutching at him like someone's going to take him away. Jeremiah sobs and wraps his arms around Jerome's neck, his back arching and his hips jerking before he comes. It hurts, but Jeremiah has never felt more like he belongs.

"I love you, too." 

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on https://brotherfuckersanonymous.tumblr.com/ anytime you wanna interact with me if you want to


End file.
